ANHALT-DESSAU, LEOPOLD I., PRINCE OF (1676-1747), called the "Old
Dessauer" (Alter Dessauer), general field marshal in the Prussian
army, was the only surviving son of John George II., prince of
Anhalt-Dessau, and was born on the 3rd of July 1676 at Dessau. From
his earliest youth he was devoted to the profession of arms, for which
he educated himself physically and mentally. He became colonel of a
Prussian regiment in 1693, and in the same year his father's death
placed him at the head of his own principality; thereafter, during the
whole of his long life, he performed the duties of a sovereign prince
and a Prussian officer. His first campaign was that of 1695 in
the Netherlands, in which he was present at the siege of Namur. He
remained in the field to the end of the war of 1697, the affairs
of the principality being managed chiefly by his mother, Princess
Henriette Catherine of Orange. In 1698 he married Anna Luise Foese,
an apothecary's daughter of Dessau, in spite of his mother's long and
earnest opposition, and subsequently he procured for her the rank of
a princess from the emperor (1701). Their married life was long and
happy, and the princess acquired an influence over the stern nature of
her husband which she never ceased to exert on behalf of his subjects,
and after the death of Leopold's mother she performed the duties of
regent when he was absent on campaign. Often, too, she accompanied him
into the field. Leopold's career as a soldier in important commands
begins with the outbreak of the War of the Spanish Succession. He had
made many improvements in the Prussian army, notably the introduction
of the iron ramrod about 1700, and he now took the field at the
head of a Prussian corps on the Rhine, serving at the sieges of
Kaiserswerth and Venlo. In the following year (1703), having obtained
the rank of lieutenant-general, Leopold took part in the siege of Bonn
and distinguished himself very greatly in the battle of Hoechstaedt, in
which the Austrians and their allies were defeated by the French under
Marshal Villars (September 20, 1703). In the campaign of 1704
the Prussian contingent served under Prince Louis of Baden and
subsequently under Eugene, and Leopold himself won great glory by his
conduct at Blenheim. In 1705 he was sent with a Prussian corps to join
Prince Eugene in Italy, and on the 16th of August he displayed his
bravery at the hard-fought battle of Cassano. In the following year he
added